Yes, I still think that breaking up MS still would have been a good idea. It took three unexpected developments for MS to be as docile as it is now:
- The rise of Linux and F/OSS more generally. There are all sorts of reasons it didn't have to happen.
- The failure to execute competently on mobile (making a scaled-down Windows instead of a mobile-first OS) at the exact same time that Apple, almost out of nowhere, was executing competently, and Google, not previously an OS or hardware company, acquired Android, which depended on Linux and other FOSS being ready and robust for consumer use.
- The failure to execute competently on the internet. They certainly had the positioning (IE, ActiveX, IIS, Hotmail, MSN, etc.), skills, and compute capacity to have won on everything from personal cloud services like email/docs to cloud computing infrastructure.
FOSS was a miracle and the other two mistakes. We can't write laws as if we assume that miracles and mistakes will happen.
I'm sure others (like myself) would be interested in your opinion on present day Microsoft. do you think they have enough competition in the desktop marketplace now? Do you think they warrant regulating as things currently stand? How about the rest of the Gang-of-five (Amazon/Apple/Alphabet/Facebook)?
side note: Maybe newer HNers don't realise but downvoting on HN is _not_ to express disagreement (you do that by replying and expressing your opposing opinion), downvoting here _ought_ to be used to express disapproval of behaviour. I'm correct in this, no?
Are you sure? Microsoft's monopoly was mostly on desktop PC operating systems, and almost all desktops are still running Windows. Most people have never heard of Gnu/Linux and wouldn't want or even know how to install it if they had. MacOS is exclusive to one luxury brand, and I really don't see it much outside of developers and college students.
But I take your point.
In a well-functioning market, all you would have to do to beat Microsoft would be to make a better operating system. In the current market, to beat Microsoft, you have to make a better operating system, target a new category of device, and own one of the biggest companies and several of the biggest websites in the world.
The Facebook API providing "interoperability" is exactly what got 100 million people's data leaked and a $5 billion fine from the FCC. These companies shouldn't be allowed to provide an open api, as we keep seeing there's no way to make it secure.
However Facebook, a 1:many communication platform, is likely impossible to federate while retaining privacy.
The postal service.
Telephone network.
They caught wind of their "mistake" and "corrected" that error in Windows 10 but have since slightly changed course under pressure[0].
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/5/15188636/microsoft-windows...
Definitely something is broken if Facebook can acquire not just Instagram but WhatsApp as well. One or both of those deals should have been blocked by regulators on at least one side of the Atlantic. And there's an argument to be made that Microsoft should not have been allowed to buy Skype.
I don't agree with your take on Amazon. We can't trust the US government to police the large companies. The large companies are too good at (a) walking right up to the line or (b) buying off the people who make/enforce the laws.
Don't understand the downvotes either.
The idea was that time and again Microsoft's OS division would anti-competitvely design internal APIs in DOS and Windows that its App division would leverage. There were also instances where Microsoft subtley broke DOS (and maybe even Windows, but definitely DOS) for competing applications. People used to talk about "undocumented" API calls.
In the end Microsoft's OS gained proper competition through the paradigm shift of FOSS, specifically with Linux. Microsoft helped a key competitor (Apple) off its knees and look where we are now – Apple has a mobile OS, Microsoft has none. Microsoft didn't board the internet/web train quick enough, didn't forsee how big search and social media would become (in fairness, a vanishingly small number of people did) and so now they have Google and Facebook to compete with. Amazon parlaying their experience from a building an at-scale marketplace to a cloud-computing platform took everyone by surprise.
Back in the day I lamented Microsoft's stranglehold on the software industry. They are still a behemoth but they no longer have the stranglehold they once had. Amazon has competition. Does Amazon unfairly leverage its marketplace monopoly to crush competitors? If they do, prosecute them. If they don't, out innovate and out compete them!
Will Google's stranglehold on search ever be broken? Maybe we'll have to think laterally. Like distributed open-source search. Will Facebook's hegemony over social media (FB, FB messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram) ever be challenged? Do we have the luxury of finding out in a decade or two like we did with Microsoft? Microsoft never amassed the data on their "customers" that Google and Facebook and every Tom, Dick, and Harry do now.
Of all these companies I intuitively feel that Facebook should be broken up. Into its constituent social media parts, that is. Either that or legally mandate interoperability so that we can move to a federated social media landscape to encourage genuine innovation and competition. We need the global equivalent of the ITU but for social media.
Amazon are scary but that's only because they are bad-ass. If they break the law, fine. If it turns out in a decade that it hasn't been possible to unseat or challenge the enormous tech incumbents with FOSS challenges then maybe we ought to take a serious look at the economics, social dynamics, and network effects involved.
edit: clarity
edit ii: could people who have downvoted my comment explain why please?